Thoughts on Life, Love, Politics, Hypocrisy and Coming Out in Mid-Life

Friday, January 03, 2014

The GOP Needs to Stop Being Anti-Government

The far right base of the Republican Party views government as an evil and would dismember it - at least until they suddenly find themselves needing its programs such as social security and Medicare. And in the process of dismantling government these people care nothing for the fact that (i) there are some functions that only government can do and (ii) countless people would be thrown on the trash heap if programs were cut so that the greed of the far right could be satisfied. The latter result underscores that for all the religiosity of the Christofascists, they are anything by followers of the Gospel message. Instead, they are modern day Pharisees of the worse ilk. Moreover, as a piece in the Washington Post by a conservative writer points out, their agenda is NOT consistent with what the Founding Fathers envisioned. Here are column highlights:

A political backlash has commenced within the Republican Party
against tea party and libertarian groups that have limited interest in
securing Republican victories and majorities. Elected leaders, party
officials and business groups have begun pushing back against
self-destructive legislative strategies and unelectable primary
candidates.

But the GOP’s political reaction often concedes a great deal of
ideological ground to anti-government populism — what its advocates
describe as “constitutionalism.”

This cedes too much. In a new essay in National Affairs, “A Conservative Vision of Government,”
Pete Wehner and I argue that the identification of constitutionalism
with an anti-government ideology is not only politically toxic; it is
historically and philosophically mistaken.

It is not enough to praise America’s Founders; it is necessary to
listen to them. The Federalist Founders did not view government as a
necessary evil. They referred to the “imbecility” of a weak federal
government (in the form of the Articles of Confederation) compared to a
relatively strong central government, which is what the Constitution
actually created. Though they feared the concentration of too much power
in one branch of government, they believed that good government was
essential to promote what they called the “public good.”

And they assumed that the content of the public good would shift over time. “Constitutions of civil government,” argued Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 34,
“are not to be framed upon a calculation of existing exigencies, but
upon a combination of these with the probable exigencies of ages. . . .
Nothing, therefore, can be more fallacious than to infer the extent of
any power, proper to be lodged in the national government, from an
estimate of its immediate necessities. There ought to be a CAPACITY to
provide for future contingencies as they may happen.”

In the tradition of the Federalist Founders, Abraham Lincoln believed
the federal government should be capable of adjusting to changing
circumstances and active in pursuit of national purposes. In his “Fragment on Government,”
Lincoln described a number of matters requiring the “combined action”
of government, including “public roads and highways, public schools,
charities, pauperism” and “providing for the helpless young and
afflicted.”

Conservatives naturally want to be seen as defenders of the
Constitution. But “constitutional conservatives” need to recognize what
both the Federalist Founders and Lincoln actually envisioned for the
republic they respectively created and preserved. Far from being
constrained by the political and economic arrangements of an
18th-century coastal, agrarian republic, the Founders fully expected the
United States to spread across a continent, undergo economic and social
change and emerge as a global actor. And they purposely designed a
constitutional system that could accommodate such ambitions.

[T]hey placed few limits on the public policies that durable majorities
might adopt in the future — leaving “a capacity to provide for future
contingencies.”

In our time, durable majorities have endorsed the
existence of Social Security and Medicare. These roles of government
were not envisioned by the Founders. But they do not violate a principle
of our system nor run counter to the prescient mind-set of the
Founders.

The broad purposes of the modern state — promoting equal opportunity,
providing for the poor and elderly — are valid within our
constitutional order. But these roles are often carried out in
antiquated, failing systems. The conservative challenge is to accept a
commitment to the public good while providing a distinctly conservative
vision of effective, modest, modern government.

But a shift in
mind-set is first required among conservatives: thinking of government
as a precious national institution in need of care and reform. This
would honor the Founders. The real Founders.

Will this sound reasoning resonate with the far right? Probably not since the mindset of the far right is based on greed, hate and clinging to writings of ignorant, uneducated Bronze Age herders who never could have imagined the modern world. Those who embrace ignorance in a celebratory manner will never accept sound and rational reasoning.

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Out gay attorney in a committed relationship; formerly married and father of three wonderful children; sometime activist and political/news junkie; survived coming out in mid-life and hope to share my experiences and reflections with others.
In the career/professional realm, I am affiliated with Caplan & Associates PC where I practice in the areas of real estate, estate planning (Wills, Trusts, Advanced Medical Directives, Financial Powers of Attorney, Durable Medical Powers of Attorney); business law and commercial transactions; formation of corporations and limited liability companies and legal services to the gay, lesbian and transgender community, including birth certificate amendment.

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